Well the long awaited upgrade to the GPS system is going to have to wait awhile longer. Seems that budget issues and such has caused the USAF to delay implementation for at least a year.

The company I work for makes the GPS III satellite. Our competition make the ground station. The satellite build is ahead of schedule and will be delivered in 2014. The ground control station in trouble. The contractor and the USAF are having contractual issue as they continue to change the baseline requirements for the station. I blame both sides. I understand the USAF wanting the latest technology capability, and I understand the contractor for wanting to get paid to make all of the changes. But this means a 2-3 year delay.

In the end it won't effect our near term navigation capability or our game for that matter. But, unless the USAF gets more spacecraft to use their launch schedule is royally screwed up.

The launch of the first GPS III satellite has slipped to 2015 and completion of the ground control system is now delayed by up to two years, according to the chief of the Air Force’s space operations

“We'll be ready to launch the first GPS III in 2015, but it now appears the next generation GPS Operational Control System, or OCX, won't be ready for about a year or two after that,” General William L. Shelton, commander of Air Force Space Command told attendees at the 28th Annual National Space Symposium.

The first GPS III satellite had been expected to launch sometime in 2014.

The slip in the satellite’s launch date, however, is not due to development problems with the spacecraft, according to the program’s primary contractor.

“Production is proceeding well and we are on schedule to deliver the first GPS III satellite for launch availability in 2014,” said Michael Friedmann, a spokesman for Lockheed Martin. “The Air Force will make a launch date decision based on booster availability, ground system readiness and DoD priorities.”

For us probably not that much unless you buy new GPSrs. Maybe better signal strength which means better reception under foliage. For the military and probably commercial navigation, improvements in accuracy and anti-jam capability. Also they will last twice as long as the current generation (15 years vs the current 7.5 years). The new processor also allows them to have more than 32 satellites operating at one time on the network. As previously, they will all still have look down nuclear detection capability and the later launches vehicle (SV 9 and above) will have communications networking capability as well.

-- First satellite to broadcast common L1C signal compatible with Galileo

Does this mean it's backwards compatible with the existing system? So it will complement the existing system and offer additional benefits for new receivers that are designed to take advantage of it?_________________Hmm...

Yes, it will replace existing satellites over the period of the launches. It will take several years or more for them to launch all of them. Your existing GPSr will not know the difference between the GPS II, GPS IIR or GPS III signal._________________Airborne All the Way!